Contributed by Jim Bailey, the president of One 80 Painting, located in Phoenix, Arizona.

I was sitting at home watching television when a hard knock at the door startled me. I opened the door and saw a normal-looking guy wearing a normal-looking suit. He asked me if I was James Bailey, and when I confirmed, he handed me a stack of papers, informed me that I had been served and wished me good luck. Luck was exactly what I needed.

In its infancy, the commercial painting business I co-founded was under attack by a tenacious competitor. My growing company had only four employees at the time; they had more than 1,000. We had the expenses of a start-up, US$30,000 in savings and some credit cards; they had the deep pockets of a national organization raking in US$30 million in annual sales. It was a David and Goliath scenario, only in the business world and without the handful of rocks.